Together for a brief time
by catdammerj
Summary: Rose is on assignment far away from Court. Adrian can only wait. When she returns, some of their feelings come to the surface. One-shot.


The door opened with little noise, but I still winced. I didn't want to wake him. Adrian was lying asleep in his bed. I walked towards him, tossing my bag on a random chair as I went. I saw a few open bottles of liquor on the table and sighed. Old habits die hard. And it's not like I was here to enforce them.

Before I got any closer, Adrian turned. His eyes opened for a millisecond, then closed, then opened again. He sat up.

"You're back." Two words. Simple.

"Yeah, I am," I said, leaning against a post. I looked at Adrian for a second. He still looked the same. His green eyes and long body. His hair, mussed from sleep, was a little messier than normal, but he still looked the same. Adrian. I had missed him.

He looked at me for a second, studying me too. I wondered what he saw. I had a bruise on my cheek from a recent fight. My clothes were a little worn through, and big on me. I worked with about ten other guardians to collect information on Strigoi hideouts, and eventually, we would lead the strikes against them. Even though I loved this job, and it was the best I could hope for, it still made me staying in any place for long impossible. Especially Court, where I really served no purpose.

A small smile crossed Adrian's face, before he said, "I've missed you, Rose."

I walked over to him and sat at the edge of his bed. "Me, too. How have things been?"

"Okay. Not the same without you. How long are you here for?"

"One week. Then it's off the Norway." I made a small face. I'd worked in Norway a few times already, and I really didn't particularly enjoy it. I preferred the heat to the cold.

Adrian sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. "That's it? They couldn't give you any more time?"

I got angry at this statement for some reason. "What the hell do you expect? This is my job! You knew, you should have known that I wasn't going to stay here forever, no matter what. I'm doing what _I _want. I like this job so deal."

He got angry also. It looked like we were going to have a huge fight about this. "What the hell do _you _expect? I wait here for you, never knowing how long you're going to be gone. I get a few weeks a year, if I'm lucky, to spend with you. We both know if you pushed harder, you could probably get more time off. But you're too goddamned caught up in your crazy war against Strigoi to do anything else."

I stood up. "It's not my fault I'm actually doing something for our world. What do you do? Get drunk, smoke!" I kicked over an empty liquor bottle, and it shattered. "_I'm _out there, protecting me, protecting you, protecting everyone. And you only think about yourself. You're selfish, petty, insolent. You're stupid!" I screamed, anger coursing through my body.

I expected Adrian to scream back at me. Instead, he suddenly seemed defeated. His shoulders sagged and he let out a big breath. "I know. I'm all those things."

I turned around to face him again. Quietly, I admitted, "So am I." With a sigh, I walked back over to him and sat next to him on the bed.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"So am I."

"We're both idiots."

"I know. But at least we're together. I know I don't have a lot of time. But what little time I _do _have, I want to spend with you. Not fighting."

The old Adrian was back in an instant. With a cocky smile, he said, "I can think of plenty of things to do." He meant it only as a suggestion, but I responded immediately. My mouth met his, and almost at the same time my hands began tugging at his shirt. He responded instantly, tugging my shirt over my arms.

I knew that we should be talking, or something. I knew that each time I returned to the Court, after going on some dangerous mission to fight Strigoi, Adrian became completely dependent on us being together. And each time I left, his heart was broken, and he began drinking, each time more than the last.

But at that moment I didn't care. I was with Adrian for the brief time I had.

It was enough.


End file.
